never tell with wizards.
Chapter 10: Coronation
Year of Opening Doors (26 DR)
Ondeth’s smoke clung to Faerlthann Obarskyr as he stormed into the elven court, the wizard Baerauble trailing a short and respectable distance behind him. Even so, the mage had to lengthen his strides and hasten to keep up with the young man.
The Court of Iliphar, Lord of the Scepters, had set up a great pavilion on the site of Mondar’s Massacre, now nearly a decade ago. The reason for their appearance here was as obvious as it was threatening. Few humans knew that the massacre had been more than a goblin raid, and it had become a cautionary tale against farming beyond the comfortable wooden palisade of Suzail. But around late fires, tongues wag, and more than a few folk had been told by their fathers in confidence to beware of the elves and not “be the fool that Mondar was.”
The timing of the elven arrival was obvious as well. Ondeth had died yestereve, his great heart finally giving out after a life of hard work and harder revels. He was struck down while trying to help Smye the smithmaster unmire his cart on a muddy road. Ondeth lingered a single day, weakly making his final farewells to friends and family. When the gods finally came for him, Faerlthann was there, beside Minda and Arphoind. Minda and Ondeth had married, and Faerlthann had come at last to accept her as his father’s love, if not as his rightful mother. Arphoind, now sixteen, had been taken into the household but kept his family name in honor of Mondar.
Baerauble wasn’t present when Ondeth died, but that didn’t surprise Faerlthann. He’d seen the mage only a dozen times since the day they burned Mondar, and each time the wizard had gone behind firmly closed doors with Ondeth to deal with some matter of Suzailan import. Faerlthann recalled the old mage telling tales by the fireside when Faerlthann was a boy and wondered if he avoided the town out of shame or guilt for his knowledge of the massacre.
Ondeth’s passing came at midnight. Wood was gathered and laid in a towering pyre at the foot of the Obarskyr hills, below the expanded manor house. The old farmer’s body was dressed in a saffron gown,. and his ancient hammer and sledge were laid on his chest. When the first rays of the sun struck Suzail, the wood was set ablaze, and Ondeth’s spirit was sent to join his brothers’ and Mondar’s in the halls of the gods.
It was then that word spread that the elves were here. Not one or two, as sometimes wandered into town, or even a party of hunters like the dozen who’d commandeered a tavern five years back. This time it was more, much more: The elven court had arrived.
North and west of the town, their huge tents of diaphanous green and yellow broke smoothly above the green shadowtop leaves like the shoulders of some great draconian beast.
It was a strange coincidence, folk said, their arrival so soon after Ondeth’s passing. Faerlthann no longer believed in coincidences, and he believed in them even less when Baerauble, green-robed and as lean as ever, finally appeared.
The mage pulled him away from the feast hall while the pyre was still blazing strong. Faerlthann set his jaw. The cheek of the man! If the wizard was still a man, truly…
The wizard made a few mumbled apologies to Minda and young Arphoind and said that matters of utmost urgency demanded that the scion of the Obarskyrs accompany him. Lord Iliphar wished to have words with Faerlthann Obarskyr.
Faerlthann protested, but there was a look on the mage’s face that stopped his words as surely as any spell. He looked at his family. Minda nodded for him to go. Arphoind’s face was creased with a deep frown, and his nod was slower to come-but come it did.
Still in the hall, in front of all the leading families, Baerauble grasped young Obarskyr’s shoulders firmly. He muttered his inhuman words and the two were bathed in a brilliant glow. From his father’s tales, Faerlthann knew what to expect and stood calmly under Baerauble’s hands. When the radiance faded, they were standing at the cavernous entrance to the elves’ pavilion.
The structure had been raised, and was kept aloft, by elven magic. A series of spires curved out like horns from a floating dragon’s head to shelter huge open spaces beneath. Diaphanous fabrics hung from those spires, shimmering in the morning sun, to make the vast walls of the pavilion. The air smelled of warm summer earth. Butterflies, whose season had not yet come beyond this place, fluttered to and fro on soft breezes. From ahead came the soft, liquid chords of a lute played with more skill than the Obarskyr heir had ever heard before. As he shook off Baerauble’s hands and strode forward, a singer’s voice rose to join the music-an almost sobbing voice of velvet, clearer and higher than that of any human woman.
Faerlthann had no time or patience for the wonders of the elves, he was too busy charging forward. The dratted wizard and these damnably imperious elves hadn’t even given him a chance to change! He still wore mourning white, the tabard and hood covering most of the rest of his garb. At his hip swung Mondar’s heavy-halted sword, now his own, which had gained a name in the past decade: Ansrivarr, the elvish word for “memory.” The smoke of the pyre still clung to him, and Faerlthann saw several delicate elf women hold sleeves to their nostrils as he passed. That small slight fed his fury even more.
He burst into the main chamber unannounced, the wizard doing nothing to impede his progress. Faerlthann catapulted into the place beneath the highest spire, a space larger than any human church on this side of the Sea of Fallen Stars.
The voice and the lute stopped immediately, and a there was a soft, sibilant drawing of breath from a hundred elven throats. Clusters of courtiers in Faerlthann’s way parted as if split by a blade, clearing a path for the young Obarskyr. The last to get clear of his route was the elven troubadour herself, who paused only to give a small bow as she ceded the floor to the newcomer.
A tripartite throne stood on the far side of the pavilion. It did not look crafted so much as grown there, for it seemed rooted firmly in the earth itself, the high seats reached by a set of low, broad crystalline steps that glistened like pools of melted ice. The right-hand seat was occupied by a stern-looking elf in full armor, the fine links of his silver mail flowing to match his lean body. In the left-hand seat was an elven woman, her flowing gown the same shade of green as Baerauble’s robes.
In the center sat the tallest and eldest of the elves. He was a wan, thin creature, to Faerlthann’s eyes as ancient as the forest itself… or more. This elf’s eyes gleamed like bright gems at the bottom of great, sunken pits, and his skin possessed a sallow luminescence, strengthened by the light filtering through the fabric of the pavilion. The ancient elf was not unmarked, down one side of his face ran a single great scar. On his brow, the elf wore a circlet of gold, its three tall spires set with purple amethysts.
“Greetings, Faerlthann Obarskyr, son of Ondeth,” said the eldest elf calmly, his voice a rich symphony of pleasantry. “I bring you the greetings of Iliphar Nelnueve, Lord of the Scepters, and all the elven peoples. Our condolences on the passing of your father.”
“You did not summon me from my father’s funeral for mere condolences, elf lord,” said Faerlthann flatly. “What is so important that I could not finish honoring my father’s memory?”
The stern armored elf on the right stiffened, and Faerlthann saw him grip the arms of his seat firmly. The female on the left-hand seat, on the other hand, merely raised her eyebrows and gave young Faerlthann a small smile.
If the centermost elf was stung by the human’s words, he did not show it. “It is your father we need to discuss with you. More importantly, the legacy of your father, to you and to the humans who remain in Cormyr.”
Baerauble came forward and placed himself to one side, between Faerlthann and the elven triumvirate. He was choosing his side in this fight, Faerlthann thought. In the middle. Faerlthann felt abandoned and alone, but did not let his worry cloud his face or his judgment.
The elf continued, ignoring the human mage. “There have been humans who came into the wolf woods before Ondeth’s people. Some passed through. Some sought to despoil our lands. The former we allowed to pass. The latter… we destroyed. Your father, and those he brought with him, did not pass through. Nor did they despoil our hunting grounds. They kept to their first glade and rarely harmed the land beyond it. Ondeth’s people served as adequate caretakers of the land under your father’s leadership.”
